CNETCloudflare, Inc.

Cloudflare runs a network of nodes between the user and the website: it accelerates, filters and protects traffic.

It began as protection from distributed attacks and delivery of content from the nearest node. Over time the same network grew corporate access without a traditional VPN, application security, and compute at the network edge next to the user. One infrastructure serves every product, so each additional one is cheap to run.

Sales work in two stages: a free tier builds an enormous base and yields data on global traffic, while paid enterprise contracts produce the revenue. The metric watched is the number of large customers rather than the total count.

The growth direction is edge compute and storage, where the company competes not with security vendors but with cloud operators. The weak points are network capital intensity and long enterprise sales cycles. The company pays no dividend.